I haven't heard any official word from Pathé about Le samourai. Everything has been done the most quietly possible.
In fact, the only thing I heard from Pathé about this release was their denial about the problem saying that "the restoration we did was beautiful and has no problem, so get lost".
Of course the restoration is nice, we saw that with the new theater prints, but the BD has the problem, so they were just eluding the problem.

Comparative caps are available on DVD Classik, but also on Caps-a-holic.

To my knowledge, Gaumont explicit post of how they have "screwed up" is the only single time I've ever seen a video editor aknowledging this fact, which makes it pretty ballsy considering how many FUBARed discs have been discretly shoved up the market, from Universal / FOX DNRed discs (Patton, Gladiator, The Longest Day, Predator, all the shoddy Hitchcock set, etc) to badly compressed Fanny & Alexander and The Last Emperor at Criterion (not even speaking about their absolutely hilarious response about how they should have waited the new restoration for The Leopard).

Finch wrote:PS.: If you know the films he's reviewing, I always thought it totally obvious that Tooze mostly takes screencaps from the beginning or end of the corresponding chapter. Add to that the cut and paste jobs from previous reviews (to be fair, Svet does it with certain phrases in his reviews as well) and it's clear to me, he doesn't spend as much time with the disc as other reviewers do. Not to mention his questionable method of obtaining the screen grabs.

Again, looking at how it's quick for me to post a review after I watched a movie, I'm quite surprised about this. The longest is still to scan the disc (which usually takes 30 min), which leaves a lot of time to think about the pros and cons of the PQ and the AQ, and to write everything down in what usually takes 2x5 lines of text. Then, just start the movie, random grab caps, and it's pretty much done. I don't want, of course, to say that doing reviews is easy, far from this, but writing them always seemed to be something quite quick once you know what to write. Anyway.

lefeufollet wrote:Given the circumstances of the Madame debacle, I would expect any potential reissue to be handled in a different manner.

Perhaps Criterion could do a replacement program? It would probably be less expensive than the ones done for Carlos/Walkabout (I assume/hope those sold better than this mess). People did buy Criterion's bluray expecting some semblance of acceptable picture quality.

Is anybody going to be at the Wexner talks this year? Someone needs to ask them a point blank question on this and Children of Paradise. Either that, or we all need to be sending them emails. This is probably where direct communication (not facebook) with the fans would come in handy.

Good god, man-- I go on professional hiatus and Criterion QC goes blotto and bro David & co change the world (the tiny one of arthouse vid at least)! Reminds of me getting Bergstrom down into the muck and mire of the 4Devils hoo ha and the legend living forever in the Murnau Borzage Fox Box.

Those screencaps were indeed some of the most gross looking abominations I've seen inna dog's age. . . characters waxy and fucking corpselike like they clambered outa bottles of formaldehyde after a monthlong fermentation in situ on the set. Gotta love when hyperenthusiastic folks find a way to take superior technology and complete nuke all possibility of it's potential via overindulgence.

Someone at Amazon France posted a review of the soon to be released Gaumont edition of Madame de..., and the response is positive. He says there are limits as to how good this will ever look due to the poor condition of the source elements, but at least the digital tweaking has been dialed back, DNR is minimal, and there appears to be healthy grain present. So the good news is it looks as though the complaints have been heard, and addressed. I'll wait for a more detailed review though, hopefully from bluray.com, before deciding if this is worth an upgrade from the Criterion DVD.

I hope this bodes well for the Le Plaisir blu-ray too. And with Carlotta releasing Letter From An Unknown Woman, I'm just about ready to ditch all my US/UK Ophuls (except Lola Montes) for the new French Ophuls Blu rays. Hopefully La Ronde will come soon too.

I've also read that the documentary included on the disc used extracts of the movie taken from the 1st attempted restoration (the one Criterion ended up using) and that the comparison leaves no doubt as to how much better this restoration V2 is.

As a further matter, HDLand have listed that there are English subs on the LE PLAISIR release, a confirmation which seems, at least according to RDA over at the blu-ray.com forums, to be a pretty strong verification.

A forumer on DVD Classik also wrote that there are at least English subs on Madame de. I guess there should also be some on Le plaisir.

swo17 wrote:

EddieLarkin wrote:it'd be nice for Criterion to acknowledge they messed up and to reissue the release with this new transfer.

I'd even be fine with them remaining silent on the matter and just taking the opportunity to fix things under the guise of a dual format upgrade.

Gaumont aknowledged they screwed up (I don't recall having seen any other company saying so explicitly something like this, scrapping all the work done to redo it from scratch again), they reissued what is a vastly superior disc, and everybody's happy.

I honestly think Criterion should be honest and aknowledge, for once, that they haven't be picky enough on what they have been supplied with. I'm quite sure everyone would be happy with such a statement, instead of staying silent like for Children of Paradise (or, even worse, defensive like for The Leopard).

rwaits wrote:That is a HUGE relief. I am so pleased that heard the criticism and fixed this. The foliage/background in that 2013 screen grab looks like a Monet painting.

I had completely forgotten what an absolute cock-up the original was. It's almost as if somebody just opened the frame in Photoshop and put it under the cutout filter. At least now that it's been fixed the time for outrage has passed and the time for gentle laughter can begin. Flicking between the two restorations really does bring to mind, more immediately than anything else I can think of, the bottemlessly deep potential of human stupidity.

shaky wrote:As a further matter, HDLand have listed that there are English subs on the LE PLAISIR release, a confirmation which seems, at least according to RDA over at the blu-ray.com forums, to be a pretty strong verification.

It seems that either Amazon or the distributor have caught on to the fact that people from other regions are buying French discs (perhaps those with English subtitles are selling better?) & displaying the (more complete/accurate?) information people want. Hopefully more French discs will include English subtitltes....& more Ophuls are in the pipeworks.

Just a minor curiosity: have any of you, based solely on that single screencap comparison, pre-ordered the Gaumont Madame De?

Because I have the Criterion & UK dvds I can hold off buying until they drop in price (and waiting for the reviews isn't bad too). Carlotta & Gaumont discs usually don't drop in price much on Amazon.fr until after a year or so on the market. If the reviews are excellent though, I might be tempted to buy before a sale.

it'd be nice for Criterion to acknowledge they messed up and to reissue the release with this new transfer.

Another way around admitting a mistake would be if Criterion simply upgraded to an Ophuls box set for all three titles once La Ronde is ready.

Does anyone know who handled the corrected scan? Maybe someone can refresh my memory as I purposefully tried to forget about the Madame De debacle back when it seemed that the 2013 scan would sadly be the final word for some time - wasn't there a French post facility that handled the initial Madame De scan as well as several other notorious DNR jobs?

I too think that Criterion should somehow look at how to rerelease the film. In my opinion the rerelease was their biggest misstep.

Gaumont appear to have done a proper job on The Earrings of Madame de..., and I've happily ordered a copy.

rwaits wrote:Does anyone know who handled the corrected scan? Maybe someone can refresh my memory as I purposefully tried to forget about the Madame De debacle back when it seemed that the 2013 scan would sadly be the final word for some time - wasn't there a French post facility that handled the initial Madame De scan as well as several other notorious DNR jobs?

pro-bassoonist wrote:These masters/restos have been coming from two places: L'Immagine Ritrovata Bologna and Eclair Laboratories, Epinay-sur-Seine. Again, I might be missing some information here, but these are the two locations that are typically credited for recent restorations.

Generally speaking, recent content coming from L'Immagine Ritrovata Bologna has been fine. Some minor issues might have popped up here and there, but the work done there lately has been fine.

This has not been the case with Eclair Laboratories, Epinay-sur-Seine. The resto for The Earrings of Madame de... came from the labs...I believe that Gaumont also had to contact the people there after the complaints last year ...

All things considered, all facts point to Eclair Laboratories, Epinay-sur-Seine as being the place where restos are destroyed.

rwaits wrote:Does anyone know who handled the corrected scan? Maybe someone can refresh my memory as I purposefully tried to forget about the Madame De debacle back when it seemed that the 2013 scan would sadly be the final word for some time - wasn't there a French post facility that handled the initial Madame De scan as well as several other notorious DNR jobs?

I too think that Criterion should somehow look at how to rerelease the film. In my opinion the rerelease was their biggest misstep.

Gaumont worked with Eclair on Madame de. Eclair scanned the movie, and then did an awful restoration. Gaumont managed to sell it to Criterion who released it as is. Huge backlash. Criterion didn't say anything. Meanwhile, Gaumont aknowledge it's not up to snuff, and decided to scrap the restored master to do a new one all over again, with a reasonable delay on the release date.

In the end, the same companies are involved in both results. It's certainly the same scan. What is different is the restoration handling.

Eclair has had other misfires with Gaumont, especially Bande à part and Un condamné à mort (+ a couple of other titles, but to a lesser extent).
However, you probably are refering to Children of Paradise, who wasn't handled by Gaumont nor Eclair.